It seems like Benioff and Weiss had an outline of what they wanted to happen in this season, but the lead-ins to the big events in the story generally feel quite poorly executed compared to how they used to be in the earlier seasons.

Hard to blame them for that tbh, they had an amazingly written source material early on, that's why they had so much faith in the show and tried so hard to make it a reality.

I remember they gave interviews early on, saying that their main goal was to make awesome 3 seasons ending with the Red Wedding and they will be happy if they make it that far with the show.

It's just a shitty situation that they ended up with where they have to finish this awesome decades in the making story on the fly with bits and pieces that they got.

Yeah the whole premise of the last 2 episodes to kidnap a wight for Cersei and risk so much for it was dumb. But they had to move the plot forwards somehow.

I guess the dragon needed to end up on the white walkers side to help them get through the wall, Dany had to see the undead army and so they did what they could to make it happen and move forward.

Yes it was rushed, dumb, timelines didn't make much sense and they had to use a ton of cheap writer tricks with a bunch of cop-outs and deus ex machina saves to make the whole ordeal at least somewhat dramatic. But I'm willing to let it slide and get over it if it was a necessity.